4 Insane Ways People Torture Themselves in the Name of Sport

Sports encourage people to put themselves through rigorous physical torture for the chance to earn the glorious admiration and respect of their peers. The following sports do all of that first thing and none of the second.

#4. World Sauna Championships

The World Sauna Championships is exactly what it sounds like: Competitors sit in a sauna for as long as they can, enduring a temperature of 230 degrees Fahrenheit in hopes of outlasting everyone else and being crowned Sauna Champion of the World.

#3. Dinka Fat Men

Members of the Dinka tribe in southern Sudan take great pride in obesity, where it is considered a sign of wealth (as opposed to America, where the wealthy look like bronzed leather skeletons). Every year, the single men of the tribe engage in a milk-drinking competition to see who can become the fattest of them all. Over the course of three months, they force as much milk down their gullets as they possibly can, and then do their very best to make as little effort as possible, sparing any calories that might be burned off by unnecessary activities such as standing up or thinking.

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images News/Getty Images Or not guzzling milk in front of growing children in the middle of the goddamned African desert.

After nearly gorging themselves to death, they strip ass naked and paint their bodies with burned cow shit, letting everyone know that within this deuce-smeared marshmallow man beats the heart of a champion.

Quo.es"Eye ... of the ... tiger, it's the ... thrill of the ... *snore*"

#2. Self-Transcendence Race

The Self-Transcendence Race is currently the longest official race on the planet -- it's 3,100 miles long with an allotted time limit of 52 days, and we assume it gets its title from the fact that you will have long since become a shambling phantom by the time you complete it.

The goal of these games is to allow Alaskans to put their unique survival skills on display for the whole world. One such event is the ear pull contest, because this is apparently a hardship that Alaskans are regularly called upon to endure.

This event is actually banned from some arctic sports competitions, although we're not sure what event they're filling that gap with, since there's clearly a sufficient drought of things to do in Alaska that ripping each other's ears off is considered a sport.